Category: Entrepreneurship Education

Entrepreneurs are considered as the most important segment of the society to generate employment opportunity, increasing GDP growth, fostering economic development around the world. Therefore, entrepreneurship development is one of the priority activities of all development initiatives. Once it was assumed that the entrepreneurship is a by-born quality to identify profitable ideas, organise factors of production, take risks to be failure so on and so forth. But through a long debate during last century scientists have succeeded to prove it that, entrepreneurship is not only a by-born quality but it could be created through proper education, training and other pro-entrepreneurial supports along with a congenial environment. Entrepreneurship creation could require hundreds of supports but the most important part of it is entrepreneurship education.

Entrepreneurship education includes both academic knowledge and practical skills to prepare young people to be job provider instead of searching for a job in the market. It provides knowledge, skills and motivation to encourage student’s young mind to become an entrepreneur. Fostering entrepreneurship attitudes and skills in secondary schools raises awareness of career opportunities, as well as of ways young people can contribute to the development and prosperity of the nation. It helps to reduce unemployment and number of jobseekers one of the major problems around the world. Entrepreneurship could be one of the mandatory subjects in all levels of education with a major specialised faculty in the undergraduate or graduate levels. Specialised curriculum as well as specialised institute/university could be established to produce entrepreneurs in Bangladesh. Neighbouring India identified this issue as one of the key requirement for industrial advancement and established the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India in 1983 at Ahmadabad, Gujarat. EDI is a successful model replicated in most of the Indian states and around 25 countries globally. It is producing entrepreneurs the job providers since its inception. Our government or even the private sector could replicate the model here in Bangladesh very easily and I know that EDI authorities as very helpful in this regard.

Entrepreneurship education is essential not only to shape up the mind-sets of young people but also to provide the skills, knowledge and attitudes that are central to develop an entrepreneurial culture. Entrepreneurs play the role of catalyst to achieve economic and social development, GDP growth, promoting innovation, fostering employment generation and equity development. Entrepreneurship education is similar but not the same curriculum of business education. It requires motivation, inspiration, creation of risk taking tendency, coordination, networking, competition, business secrecy, trend analysis so on and so forth along with the business courses like management, marketing, finance, accounting etc. Entrepreneurship education includes basic scientific, ICT, innovation topics too along with hands on skill development and efficiency enhancement. It could be divided into two major heads namely entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship training.

Entrepreneurship education could be started with one or more compulsory courses from the secondary level up to the higher secondary certificates. Specialised entrepreneurship development courses could be introduced at undergraduate and graduate level under a separate faculty than that of the existing business schools. Specialised residential institutes/universities could give more output in terms of entrepreneurship development education. On the other hand entrepreneurship training could be a specialised type of practical training including apprenticeship in relevant factories started from secondary vocational level to the diploma or higher diploma/post graduate diploma levels. But for both the types of entrepreneurship study separate international standard curriculum has to be developed first. Then a sufficient number of teachers and trainers have to be developed through international standard ToTs at home or abroad. They should be selected based on open competition and previous result analysis. They have to be offered special package of benefits to ensure retention up to a certain period of time.

Producing entrepreneurship graduate is not sufficient for entrepreneurship development. An enabling environment has to be created and maintained through harmonisation of existing policies and enacting new policies of the government. Startup friendly business environment is absent in Bangladesh till today. No bank is offering loan to a startup, no tender is allowing taking part without a certain years of experience, and no government service is providing soft condition to an initiating enterprise here in Bangladesh. Probably first 1,000 days of a newly established enterprise are the toughest period of an entrepreneur here in Bangladesh. Initial business support services are absent here. Initial registrations and licenses are provided by a long lists of organisations under different ministries of the government without interlink or inter-coordination. Therefore starting a new business is the toughest job here in Bangladesh. So this starting point has to be made easy and smooth.

Initial investment, incubatory services, registrations, licenses, business networking, support services, intermediary services, and startup environment should get priority of the government policies to make the entrance easy, smooth and hassle free for a new/young entrepreneur. Otherwise next generation will not be interested to come into business in home condition rather they will migrate to abroad and brain drainage movement will get another momentum. Secondly all the government agencies like police, environment, factory, boiler, tax and customs authority, BSTI, and the local administration has to be motivated to change their mindset of existing administrative tendency into a service prodder tendency. Because nobody will go to buy harassments by investing his/her own money and brain here in Bangladesh and become an entrepreneur. Government and the private sector especially the trade organizations has to be working closely to identify existing anomalies of becoming new entrepreneurs and mitigate those factors to create a pro-investment friendly environment here in Bangladesh.

A congenial business environment will not only create local entrepreneurs but also attract foreign investment to the economy. With and united effort of both the channels of investment industrialisation of Bangladesh will be ensured and a sustainable economic development will be in place. Therefore it is the right time to look into the entrepreneurship education system seriously and create an entrepreneurship friendly business environment here in Bangladesh. Both the government and private sector joint effort could lead the initiative into a success.